|
|
 |
Archived News:
A new Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade movie offers the first clip from
Metamorf Studios' upcoming space combat strategy game. The movie offers a
narrated high-resolution look at the game, culminating with a note saying the
game's release date, formerly "early" this year ( story),
is now set as March, 2007. The clip is available from
3D Downloads, 3D Gamers,
FileFront, Gamer's Hell,
Strategy Informer, and
Worthplaying.
Finally, word from DreamCatcher is that the game's multiplayer beta test is no
longer restricted to paid subscribers, as anyone with a free
FilePlanet subscription can now join in.
The official Reprobates Website
now offers a release date (a reprodate?) for this upcoming adventure game from
Future Games. The top of the page now says "Přichází v březnu 2007," and for
those of us who do not speak Czech, also "Coming in March 2007." Thanks Frans.
The War Rock Preorder Page
offers details on how to prepurchase K2 Network's upcoming multiplayer shooter.
Word is: When gamers pre-order War Rock at one of the participating
retailers, in addition to securing a copy of the game the day it launches in
stores, they will be provided with a special code that can be applied to
existing War Rock beta accounts. The code will give players an exclusive 8th
Slot Weapon (these exclusive weapons vary by retailer and include a Gatling gun,
M60 and more).
Players will also receive exclusive in-game items including red smoke grenades,
upgraded medical kits, 100,000 bonus Dinar, and the reservation of an in-game
name for the official commercial launch of War Rock. The final retail copy of
the game will also include a flip-style map book and collectible military-style
War Rock dog tags.
This forum post which formerly offered version 5114 of the Armed Assault
demo has been updated with a new version 5116 of the sample of Bohemia
Interactive Studios' military first-person shooter (thanks Frans). As with the
previous update, it sounds like this new release can be used as a client, but is
intended for server operators: "This update is intended for dedicated hosts
only. However, it works also as client with some minor glitches and errors."
The
Neverwinter Nights Forums now offer a new beta version 1.04 English patch
for Obsidian's RPG sequel. The use-at-your-own-risk patch is accompanied by a
rollback installer to revert your game back to version 1.03. Thanks
Maximus.
A new Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines patch is now available, continuing
the remarkable post-release support for the action/RPG considering its
developer, Troika, closed shop just months after the game debuted. Another eight
bug-fixes and gameplay tweaks are included in the patch, which is available from
3D Gamers,
Gamer's Hell, and
Worthplaying.
As noted on the
Focus Home Interactive Website, the official
Loki Website now offers English and
French sections to join the German section to create a trilingual base of
operations for Cyanide Studios' upcoming hack-and-slash RPG. Thanks Frans.
The Ghost Recon
Website offers four in-game videos from Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2,
the upcoming tactical shooter sequel. Accompanied by a batch of seven new
screenshots, the movies offer extended sequences showing off the interface and
gameplay.
The newly released Supreme Commander intro movie gives the chance to view the opening of Gas
Powered Games' upcoming real-time strategy offering. The 86.4 MB download is
available on 3D Gamers.
Also, a new Europa Universalis III movie offers another look at Paradox
Entertainment's forthcoming real-time strategy sequel. One or both of two
versions of the clip, which ends rather abruptly, can be found on
3D Gamers,
FileFront, Gamer's Hell,
GameSpot, and
Worthplaying.
- Fuse Games
Sharing
the wealth on GamesIndustry.biz is a Q&A with Adrian Barritt of Fuse
Games about his company's egalitarian approach to profits: "When we formed
Fuse we'd been in the industry a long time and we knew what worked and
didn't. We wanted to do things a bit differently, and a large part of that
was trying to treat the employees as we'd like to be treated ourselves. Part
of that was making sure that when the team had worked really hard on a
project they received a decent reward, and received their share of the
royalties. We kept things nice and simple and came up with the fifty-fifty
model whereby the company keeps half of all royalties and the rest is
divided equally between everybody, from the company directors downwards, who
worked on that title."
- EVE Online
The
CCP Q&A on GameSpot talks with Nathan Richardsson about EVE Online: "No,
CCP became a profitable company two years ago--we're just looking at
increasing the development team, which we've done as we've had the funds.
Also, we're not trying to achieve 7.5 million people in EVE--I'd be happy
with 300,000 maximum. I like to see new people around, but not at the cost
of the game's overall offering. For us, it's not necessary to have a lot of
people, because we just want to have fun with EVE. The single-shard universe
will probably not scale up to 7.5 million people, after all..."
- EverQuest II
The
EverQuest II Q&A on MMORPG.COM goes "Beyond Echoes of Faydwer" in
another article-format Q&A on the MMORPG sequel with Scott Hartsman during
CES.
New version 97.92
ForceWare Drivers for Windows XP and MCE are now available (thanks Thomas),
though in a break from the usual universal support for the GeForce series, this
is specifically for the 8800 series: "Please note that this driver currently
only supports GeForce 8800 series. If you need a driver for other NVIDIA GPUs,
please visit www.nvidia.com/drivers
and select the driver for your product." The latest drivers for other cards are
the version 93.71
drivers.
Blizzard sends along the
latest subscriber milestone for World of Warcraft, announcing the population
in their MMORPG has passed the eight million mark. According to the 2006
estimates from the
CIA World Factbook, if WoW were a nation, it would be the 94th most
populated country on earth, ranking between Azerbaijan's 7,961,619 citizens, and
Burundi's 8,090,068. Word is: Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced
today that World of Warcraft®, its subscription-based massively multiplayer
online role-playing game (MMORPG), is now played by more than 8 million gamers
around the world. World of Warcraft has also achieved new regional subscriber
milestones, with more than 2 million players in North America, more than 1.5
million players in Europe, and more than 3.5 million players in China.
As
noted here, the promised War Front: Turning Point demo is now available,
offering the chance to sample Digital Reality's alternate-history World War II
RTS game. The demo is single-player only (the multiplayer demo was released a
couple of months ago ( story)), offering a new tutorial, two
missions from the German and American campaigns, and full-motion video cut
scenes. The download premieres on
GameSpot (registration required), and mirrors can be found on
3D Gamers,
ComputerGames.ro,
eXp Download,
FileFront, Gameguru Mania,
Gamer's Hell, and
Worthplaying.
This press release has word on a launch date for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes,
Sigil Online Games' MMORPG. Word is the game will be released in North America
and Europe by the end of this month: San Diego, CA - January 11, 2007 -
Sony Online Entertainment and Sigil Games Online today announced that the
upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
will be released to retail outlets across North America and Europe on January
30, 2007, for the suggested retail price of US$49.99. A limited edition is also
available for a suggested retail price of US$89.99.
Currently in beta, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes features vibrant environments
reminiscent of oil paintings, a robust character customization tool and three
distinct spheres of advancement in a seamless world without zoning or
instancing. The immersive fantasy world is comprised of three massive,
uniquely-themed continents for players to discover new creatures, new items and
unlimited adventure. Players have complete freedom to roam the world whether
flying dragons to islands in the sky or riding swift steeds to exotic
lands.
- id Software
John
Carmack And Todd Hollenshead Speak on Game Informer is part two of their
conversation with the id Software principals about the game biz, covering
topics like episodic gaming: "You know, it’s one of those things that sounds
like a good idea initially, but I’m not sure that—it’ll probably have some
degree of success—but I don’t think it’s necessarily a method that’s going
to cover the majority of the gaming market right now. I think it does tend
to feel a little bit—it’s all in market psychology and all of that, and I
won’t claim to be any kind of an expert on that there. It would be nice if
games could be developed more piecemeal like that, but it still is so
heavily front-loaded to build your basic core on there. It would be great if
you could go ahead and release episodes regularly after that, but I think
the customers feel to some degree that if they buy a game and they can get
episodic additions to it, that there’s this sense of, “Why didn’t they just
put that on there when I bought the main game itself?” I think there are
some barriers to overcome. It would be nice when Internet distribution does
become the main way that people get their games and you can just continue
carrying out additional upgrades as long as you’ve got enough people willing
to buy them. I think that would be good for game-development studios. But,
so far, nothing’s come along that really satisfies the same thing as the
blockbuster commercial release. Of course, it’s a tough market, with winners
and losers, but even if you’re in the winner’s slot, that’s still where the
big successes are. But I do think it’s possible for a lot of the
less-conventional marketing strategies to get to a lot of game studios.
There’s probably a lot of good business there, but it’s not the same thing
as if you’ve got the possibility of doing a triple A title, there’s nothing
that’s currently drawing you away from that."
- Garry's Mod
Garry
Newman talks with LANThrax is a Q&A with the Garry's Mod creator and
Tubeway Army front man (no wait, that was Gary Numan) about his mod and his
relationship with Valve: "I never really had the idea to develop GMod into
what it is now. We'd all been playing JBmod which was a simple mod that
enabled the physgun and let you weld s*** together. It wasn't really being
developed quick enough for me.. and I really wanted to mess around with
ropes. So I had a mess around with the SDK and got ropes working (badly - I
had no idea what I was doing). Then I added something else, then something
else.. and it eventually got to where it is now!"
Here's a newspaper article on the raw food we feed the pups. Many folks have
expressed curiosity about this when it has come up before, and this is a rare
objective look at what is a bit of a controversial topic in the world of pet
care.
|
Twitter 
